


Home is a Smell, Home is a Heartbeat

by odetteandodile



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Time, Frottage, Light Smut, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, just some soft hurt/comfort and feels really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 23:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16983720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odetteandodile/pseuds/odetteandodile
Summary: Bucky cooks an old recipe of Sarah Rogers'.Steve learns that sensory memory is a bitch.It all comes out okay in the end.





	Home is a Smell, Home is a Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> As you can see, this is more of a one shot than anything I've ever posted before. Hopefully you like it! If you do, you can thank [@calendulae](https://calendulae.tumblr.com/) for convincing me to post and not leave it languishing in the drafts. She's the best cheerleader anybody could ask for! 
> 
> This fic takes place post Winter Soldier in a world where Bucky came and found Steve shortly after to begin recovering. Buckle in for Feels (and a lil light smut). Enjoy!

The smell hits Steve like a crashing wave, and he staggers a little bit to lean against the doorframe, eyes closed, just breathing deep.

It’s a good smell—warm and familiar—and suddenly he’s somewhere else. He’s _home_. There’s an ugly floral sofa under him, and Sarah Rogers humming over a bubbling pot in the kitchen. Maybe Bucky is there too, on the other end of the couch cushions, reading a comic, knees scraped and collar askew.

And that’s when it hits him that none of it—not one single bit of that place or that moment that this _home_ smell conjures up for him still exists anywhere but locked away in Steve’s memory.

Home is a place he’ll never see again.

“Steve?” Bucky’s spotted him now, concerned voice floating from the kitchen of their apartment.

Steve does his best to pull himself together, turning his face a bit as he makes for the couch. Bucky has been doing so well, he’s been happier, more himself too as the months have rolled by them. Gone is the grim-faced man who’d shown up on Steve’s front stoop three days after his hospital release, demanding answers. He still rarely sleeps, and he’s quieter than he used to be. But Steve supposes he is too. In fact, there’s very little of any of who they used to be that’s the same.

One of the few seems to be that they’re better together than they are apart. That’s always been true, even if Steve doesn’t know exactly what it means anymore.

“Yeah Buck. You’re cooking,” he says. 

That’s new. Since coming back to himself and starting to figure out living like normal again, Bucky has been more than happy—gleeful even—to take advantage of their new century’s budget and technology for food. They dine out, order in, and generally eat what they feel (what Bucky feels) whenever they feel it.

Which maybe is the reason why Steve’s nose has his heart thudding somewhere around the bottom of his ribcage. He wasn’t prepared for that smell in this house.

“I’m making Paper Hanger’s Delight,” Bucky calls over the counter. “Remember that one? I think your mom must’ve made it about once a week—recipe was in some of our old stuff they deaccessioned—Steve?”

Steve takes a shuddering breath—of course, it’s not just a coincidence or an accidental similarity, of course it’s his mom’s recipe. It smells like home because home smelled like this when he got back from school, when his mom patched him up from fights, when he and Bucky played jacks in the living room, when he’d tried to get Sarah to take it easy and let him cook for her once she was ill enough to notice, when when when…

He rubs his hands over his face, trying to collect himself. It’s been four years since he came out of the ice, and a number of them before that since Sarah passed away—why should he suddenly _now_ be feeling this way? Unmoored and lost and wistful all at once. Just, it seems, on the strength of smelling his mom’s cooking.

Steve sinks down to sit on the sofa, angled slightly away from the kitchen. Bucky will notice something is off if he flees now back to his bedroom, or god forbid leaves the apartment. But he can’t quite stem the flood of memory suddenly battering at him—his mom’s face lighting up when her favorite song came on the radio, the spot beside the radiator where he’d sit in his armchair through his winter illnesses, the photograph of his dad on the mantle. A hundred and one little details, punishingly clear in his mind’s eye—like he could reach out and touch them, he could walk the floor of his mother’s living room still with his eyes closed. But he won’t. That place doesn’t exist anymore. 

He doesn’t want it—this feeling. There’s nothing to do with it. It’s directionless, not the kind of bad feeling where he can go out and fix or punch something to make it go away. So he tries to shove it back down, behind whatever locked door it must have resided in before. He’s gotten along fine until now without ever thinking about it—about all the things that are forever out of his reach.

Steve’s known for a long time what it feels like to yearn for something you’ll never have. When he was a kid it was to be healthy. Then to be able to make his mom better, then to be able to join up and follow Bucky into the war. But he hasn’t felt it in a while, the longing. Not since Bucky reappeared. 

Steve pulls his hands away from his face as he realizes Bucky’s come to stand in front of him, looking down at Steve with dismay.

“Steve I—I’m sorry—what did—what did I do?” Bucky asks in a small voice. He reaches forward with a quick, aborted motion before clasping his hands in front of himself, resisting the urge to touch.

Things have been good between them. Echoes of their friendship from before, as well as new things. They understand each other in ways nobody else ever could or will, thanks to all they’ve been through. Where before their connection had felt special, there’s no doubt that now it is truly unique—nobody else will ever know what it is to be displaced the way the two of them do.

But Bucky has yet to get over his reluctance to touch him, not in the casual easy way they once did. Steve thinks it’s because Bucky still can’t forgive himself for the way he’d used his hands on Steve before he remembered—the violence of the helicarrier, how his fists had beaten and wounded him. And maybe Steve isn’t any better, because he’s let Bucky keep his distance.

But right now, he thinks, they both need the contact. He does, anyway.

So he shakes his head, reaching out to grab one of Bucky’s hands—the metal one, though he barely registers anymore—to reassure him that he didn’t do anything wrong. But when he opens his mouth what he finds himself saying is something closer to the truth, bubbling up from that unexamined place without conscious thought.

“It’s not—it’s just—we can’t go _back_ Buck. My ma, your folks, _home_ , it’s all—gone.” Steve’s horrified to find his voice cracking, and he cuts himself off, looking away from Bucky’s sorrowful expression.

“Oh Steve,” Bucky says softly, lowering himself to kneel in front of Steve, slowly, like he doesn’t want to do anything that might startle him. “I know. You’re right we—we can’t go back.” Bucky’s voice hitches a little then, too, and it surprises Steve enough to meet his eyes again. Bucky chews on his bottom lip, and takes a deep settling breath. “It’s—it’s different for us, I know. Because going back is so much further away. But you know the thing is—nobody really can. Think of any one of your friends at the Tower. Maybe it’s…maybe it’s the same even if you aren’t—like us. Things change. We lose them. Doors close.” He hesitates. “What you can’t do is pretend you don’t care. How long have you felt like this? Do you even know?”

Steve just shakes his head, mutely. Even after everything—as Bucky says, after the change and the loss and the closed doors that cannot be reopened—Bucky still sees right through him.

Bucky reaches out with the hand that Steve doesn’t have a white-knuckled grip on, brushing his thumb across Steve’s cheeks—first one, then the other. And Steve realizes that they’re damp—he doesn’t know when he’d started crying. He takes a wet, shuddering breath, and Bucky combs his fingers through Steve’s hair soothingly before leaning in to press his forehead lightly to Steve’s. Steve lets out a shaky sigh, trying to savor the comfort of the closeness for as long as Bucky allows it.

“We’ve got each other, at least,” Bucky says.

“Have we?” Steve replies, the words out of his mouth before he really even thinks about them. He’s not sure what he means—what he’s asking. Of course they do. Bucky came back to him, against all the odds. He came back and he’s becoming more himself every day. Of course they have each other.

They have most of each other, anyway. And most has always been good enough before.

Bucky’s face does something complicated, and Steve wishes he could take the question back. He’s just tired, he’s just— _reacting_ , not thinking really. Steve closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Bucky’s expression—a little wounded, a little confused.

Steve feels Bucky’s face pull back from his, and he squeezes his eyes shut tighter, a tight fist of pain under his breastbone not wanting to have to watch Bucky leave him. Not forever—he trusts what they do have more than that. Bucky will always come back. But that he’ll take whatever he’s feeling somewhere alone, leaving Steve the same.

But he doesn’t move to stand, belly still pressed up against Steve’s knees where he’s kneeling in front of him. And his hand moves again, gently, through Steve’s hair.

Steve feels two more tears slide out from beneath his eyelids against his will, following the track already prepared for them down his cheeks, and he ducks his head in embarrassment, turning away.

“No, shhh,” Bucky says just above a whisper. His hand slides around to the back of Steve’s neck to hold him in place and he frees his metal one from Steve’s grasp to once again wipe at Steve’s damp cheeks. The metal is slightly warmed from his own grip, but still cool enough on his hot face. Bucky’s thumb brushes over his cheekbone, over and over as he makes calming, gentling noises under his breath.

Then the hand disappears, settling on Steve’s shoulder, to be replaced by Bucky’s warm breath across his skin as Bucky leans forward—brushing his soft, dry lips first against Steve’s furrowed brow, and then so light he can barely feel it, over each eyelid.

Steve doesn’t breathe. He opens his eyes, not trusting the evidence of his senses at all.

At the look on Bucky’s face—more vulnerable than anything Steve has seen there this century, maybe the last one too—the tight knot of pain in his chest vanishes as his heart feels like it’s shattering, then flying back together, the pieces all rearranging themselves in one bright instant.

“You do have me Steve,” Bucky says.

Then he leans forward to press one more kiss to Steve’s lips, slightly parted and pliant in his utter surprise.

It’s over before his heart remembers to beat again—just the feather light feeling of Bucky’s bottom lip sliding between his, a shared breath that brings him back to life. Bucky pulls back, lashes fanned over his cheeks as he shifts, rocking back on his heels to stand and move away.

Steve comes to his senses—his hands flying to grasp Bucky’s face between them, pulling him back and crushing their mouths together again. Steve kisses him feverishly, as if he needs fit as many into the moment as he can before the spell breaks or the dream ends. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into Bucky, but he doesn’t want it to be over yet.

When he tilts his head, letting his tongue swipe over Bucky’s bottom lip, Bucky lets out a small, hurt sound in the back of his throat and Steve pulls back at once with a sinking resignation. But Bucky’s hand darts to keep Steve’s in place, covering his fingers at Bucky’s jaw as he shakes his head.

“No—yes,” Bucky says in a breathless voice. And then his mouth is on Steve’s again, and he’s scrambling up from his knees and into Steve’s lap, wrapping his arms around Steve’s neck tightly as Steve’s arms go instinctively to his waist.

He can’t get close enough. Steve’s arms crush Bucky to his chest, grasping and smoothing and resettling to cling again, pressing into Bucky’s back with desperation. And Bucky seems to feel the same, hands moving restlessly down Steve’s back and up into his hair and clutching around his shoulders. Bucky’s tongue pushes into his mouth and Steve’s lips drop open, his own chasing back.

“Buck,” he whispers against Bucky’s lips, the one word carrying all the things he isn’t sure he knows yet how to say.

“I know—I know,” Bucky says. And miraculously, Steve believes him. Bucky’s always known more than Steve has been able to tell him.

They kiss and kiss and kiss. Steve never wants to come up for air, never wants to see the other side of this moment if he can drown in it instead.

But then he becomes aware of the fact that Bucky is making little circles with his hips, rocking ever so slightly into him, maybe without even realizing.

Steve’s whole body goes still as heat flares through him.

Bucky stills at once, too, drawing back with flaming cheeks and loosening his grip around Steve’s neck, looking away.

He clears his throat, but his voice is still husky when he says, “Sorry—too much—”

“ _No_ ,” Steve says emphatically, panting a bit and swallowing hard. He lets his hands fall from Bucky’s waist to grip at Bucky’s hips, tugging him forward. “Don’t stop.”

Bucky’s eyes flicker closed and he does as he’s told, grinding forward in Steve’s lap this time with purpose, a small moan escaping his throat. Steve can’t help an answering one of his own as Bucky rocks into him, hard and electrifying even through their layers of jeans.

“Steve, you sure—” Bucky pants in his ear. His voice is raw and dark, but still Steve knows if he said he wasn’t, Bucky would take him at his word and stop.

Which makes Steve realize how very much he doesn’t want him to.

So Steve’s hands leave Bucky’s hips to grip his ass as he arches into him, hoping that makes his interest clear enough.

Bucky rewards him with another strangled moan, falling forward against Steve’s chest. His mouth is hot and open at Steve’s throat, licking and nipping a trail up to the hinge of his jaw. Then his thumb finds one of Steve’s nipples, circling and circling at it through his thin t-shirt until Steve is writhing under him, and Steve suddenly finds himself babbling, an incoherent stream of half-finished sentences.

“Bucky what’re we—why didn’t we ever—I don’t know what I’d do without you—you’re so—I’ve always—”

Bucky doesn’t seem to have the words to reply either, instead sealing his mouth again over Steve’s and kissing him deep. He slides his hands around Steve’s shoulders and tightens his thighs around Steve’s hips, rolling them in a quick motion so that they’re lying down fully on the sofa, Steve’s body draped over his as he continues to rut up into him.

“Buck,” Steve gasps, hitching up one of his knees automatically to better angle himself against Bucky’s body. There’s heat pooling in his gut as he feels more and more outside of himself, “are you—I’m gonna—”

“Uh-huh,” Bucky says, coming out breathy and strained.

“Should we—we should go—” Steve’s not sure what he wants to suggest. He wants to take Bucky to bed, to feel Bucky’s skin against his, wants to put his mouth on him everywhere, wants to crawl inside of him and live in this feeling. But he can’t bring himself to stop either.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, raggedly, “but don’t stop.”

It’s all the permission he needs, the affirmation that Bucky is just as lost to this as him. He grips at Bucky’s hips, bearing down as Bucky arches up into him.

“Steve,” Bucky gasps.

He throws one of his legs around Steve’s waist, hooking his heel between Steve’s legs. And then his body goes still and tense, mouth dropping open and eyes fluttering shut as he comes. At the sight of Bucky’s face Steve groans, dropping his forehead to Bucky’s shoulder for a few more erratic thrusts of his hips before he follows him quickly over the edge, all of his nerves searing hot for a long, brilliant moment.

He collapses against Bucky’s body, finding that his muscles are trembling in a way that normally only ever happens anymore after the longest training sessions. Bucky’s hand is tracing small, soothing circles on his back.

He breathes heavily into Bucky’s shoulder for a few minutes as he comes down, letting Bucky’s soft hand settle him. After a while he sighs, tucking his nose into the crook of Bucky’s neck and breathing in the smell of him.

“We never—” he starts at last, hesitant.

“I know,” Bucky replies, soft in his ear.

“Did you want to?”

“I don’t know—yeah. Always. Just didn’t—did you?”

“I’ve always loved you Buck,” he says, feeling much clearer on this point now that the muddling heat in his bones has been calmed. “Any way you wanted me I would’ve wanted you. Didn’t feel like an option before.”

“You’re all I’ve got, Steve,” Bucky says, and there’s a tremor in his voice that makes Steve lift his head to look at Bucky’s face. He finds that Bucky’s eyes are glassy again with unshed tears, and Steve reaches up with shaking fingers to brush a long strand of hair from his cheek, damp with sweat. “That’s what home is—for me. You’re right we can’t go back and all of the other—the rest of it’s gone. But it doesn’t matter to me if I’ve got you.”

“You’re right, you’ve got me,” Steve says, tilting forward to place one more soft, reverent kiss on Bucky’s swollen lips. “You’ve got me.”

“Got each other. We got each other back—that counts for something.”

“Everything.”

Bucky blinks his eyes several times, the tears that had threatened not falling. Instead he smiles—tentative and hopeful.

“This is…good?”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees on a whoosh of breath, smiling too. “Really good.”

“Good.” Bucky smiles wider, the edges of it growing more certain. “You want to uh…clean up?”

Steve ducks his head, a bit sheepish. But he doesn’t really feel embarrassed, no matter how unexpected and unplanned this was. “Yeah. Good call.”

He lifts himself off Bucky, standing on legs that are still a little wobbly, but holding out a hand to help Bucky up too.

Bucky’s mouth quirks up—something close to a smirk, an echo of a Bucky from another time.

“It was, wasn’t it?”

Steve shakes his head, laughing, and pulls Bucky in for another kiss.

 

They take a long, inefficient shower, holding each other close under the spray more than they really make an effort to get clean. But both seem most keen on simply being close, skin to skin until the water starts to cool. Then Bucky does prod Steve along, both scrubbing themselves quickly to get out before it’s gone entirely cold. Bucky doesn’t like being chilly much these days.

When they return to the living room, a little damp but glowing clean from the hot water, Bucky sits Steve down at their small dining table and dishes him a plate of rice and Paper Hanger’s Delight.

The first bite doesn’t hit Steve quite as strongly as the smell had—but it’s close.

And Bucky, knowing as he always does what Steve needs before Steve has figure it out, brings something to the table that feeds him even better than the food does.

Bucky starts talking, without meeting Steve’s eyes at first as he opens beer for them both—talking about his favorite memory of being in his parent’s house. About how he misses them. About how he wishes he had the patchwork quilt from his old bed, the one his mom had made him for his tenth birthday, and which the Smithsonian didn’t have—meaning it was truly lost somewhere to time. He talks until Steve is able to do some remembering of his own, and Bucky listens and tells him how he remembers too—how good and kind Steve’s mom was. How he misses her too. How they can both miss all of them together, and how it’s better that way, to share the missing.

It’s a simple meal, Paper Hanger’s Delight. Just ground beef and tomato and vegetables all stewed together in a big pot. Sometimes when Sarah had made it it had been lighter on the beef, if it was one of those weeks at the end of the month where things were tighter. But it was something she could almost always afford at least once a week, a meal where they got to eat meat together (which didn’t always happen more than just that once or twice, but at least on Fridays). It’s nowhere near the fancy, spicy array of things that he and Bucky like to order from restaurants these days—trying things with names neither one is sure they can pronounce, always looking for something neither one has ever had. He enjoys those meals. But this is something new in this century for him too—a glimpse of something familiar in a way almost nothing else is.

Nothing but Bucky.

Bucky’s right—Steve can’t keep pretending that he doesn’t care about all the things they’ve lost. Not least the life that they’d expected to live, back in those sunshiney afternoons on the Barnes’ living room floor, or at Sarah Rogers dining table.

But he won’t forget again that home isn’t an apartment building that’s been demolished, or technologies no one uses anymore.

Home is sitting across from him. And he’s not going anywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, let me know! You can also find me on tumblr at [odette-and-odile](http://odette-and-odile.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
